Thanks to Trump, China claims mantle of the post-World War II order
Trump has plunged the world into an uncertain era of economic coercion and combat — one where many countries may see the merits in taking China’s side.
Don’t be fooled by the tanks processing down boulevards in Beijing, Moscow or, yes, even Washington this year. The Allied victors of World War II may still exult in their triumph eight decades later — on Wednesday, some world leaders will be on hand at Tiananmen Square for one such display — but what consensus there once was surrounding the postwar era has long since unraveled.
What do we mean by the postwar era? Usually, it’s a synonym for the international order forged out of the ashes of the war, the values and principles that underlay the establishment of the United Nations, the global security architecture fashioned during years of tense U.S.-Soviet competition, and a system of geopolitics and global trade underwritten for decades by U.S. foreign policy and military might.
Many Americans accepted that their nation’s primacy on the world stage was a worthy goal to achieve and maintain. And many countries elsewhere, from Europe to Northeast Asia, welcomed sheltering under the U.S. security umbrella and profiting from a Pax Americana that helped unleash the boom of globalization.
That status quo has always been in tension and had its detractors. For most of the current century, it has also been unstable, rocked by the U.S.’s failures and overreach during its War on Terror, as well as the shock of the global financial crisis. For more than a decade, wonks have penned obituaries for the post-World War II era.
Then came President Donald Trump, who accelerated the trend. His brand of ultranationalism, his protectionist assaults on global trade, his bullying of allies and his contempt for international, multilateral institutions like the United Nations all mark a rupture from previous Democratic and Republican administrations. Trump and his allies are convinced that the rules of the international system — forged by Washington to great benefit for generations of Americans — are not in the U.S.'s interest.
Instead, China and various other emerging powers had, in their view, benefited from unfair practices and U.S. indulgences. “The post-war global order is not just obsolete,” Secretary of State Marco Rubio said not long after taking office, “it is now a weapon being used against us.” Around the same time, a diplomat from a major Global South nation, speaking on the condition of anonymity to offer a frank assessment, quipped to me that for all the U.S.’s many protestations about Russia and China behaving like “revisionist” powers after the end of the Cold War, it was Trump’s America that was actually bent on rocking the boat.
Officials in Beijing have seized on the narrative, while Chinese nationalist commentators and academics push a version of World War II history that downplays the U.S.'s role in aiding China’s war effort, as my colleagues detailed on Tuesday.
“We must resolutely defend the postwar world order,” Chinese President Xi Jinping wrote in an article published in Russian state media ahead of Moscow’s May celebrations commemorating the 80th anniversary of Soviet victory over the Nazis. “As the international situation is becoming more turbulent, we should safeguard the authority of the United Nations, defend the U.N.-centered international system … and continuously push ahead with multipolarity and inclusive economic globalization.”
Xi reiterated the message this week as about 20 world leaders, including Russian President Vladimir Putin and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, traveled to China for a major security summit. He called for “a clear stand against hegemonism and power politics” — coded language for U.S. foreign policy — and appealed to the virtue of “true multilateralism,” which is anathema to Trump, who loves nothing more than bilateral dealmaking. “Global governance has reached a new crossroads,” Xi declared.
This is not new rhetoric, but thanks to Trump, Beijing’s line is more plausible than it once was. Trump’s trade wars and dramatic turn against India and Brazil — two giants of the Global South — have compelled many governments elsewhere, including those in Brasília and New Delhi, to reckon with Washington as a potential threat and adversary, and to forge new understandings with Beijing.
“The success of Xi’s foreign policy strategy is reflected in the parade of leaders traveling to China,” Jonathan Czin, a fellow at the Brookings Institution, told the New York Times. “Indeed, Xi today probably feels more besieged by visiting heads of state than encircled by the United States and its allies and partners.”
“Xi’s claim to lead a global coalition of America-sceptic powers is not as fantastical as you might think,” observed the Economist this week. “Regarding trade, where all countries want predictability, China’s boast to be an anchor of stability now rings true — at least in relative terms. The country is already the largest goods-trading partner of most of this week’s visitors, along with another 100-odd states around the world. As the Trump administration pursues a rolling campaign of economic warfare against its trading partners, China’s sins of mercantilism and state-capitalism look minor by comparison.”
Trump has plunged the world into an uncertain era of economic coercion and combat, one where many countries might see the merits in taking China’s side. “As the administration goes blow for blow with the Chinese, it is ripping apart the systems of expertise necessary to navigate the complex tradeoffs that it faces,” wrote scholars Henry Farrell and Abraham Newman in the latest issue of Foreign Affairs. “Every administration is forced to build the plane as it flies, but this is the first one to pull random parts from the engine at 30,000 feet.”
This shift is galling to many in the U.S. foreign policy establishment. “How do you navigate a complicated and dangerous world? You don’t navigate it by unraveling what has worked,” former senator and defense secretary Chuck Hagel (R-Nebraska) told my colleagues. “You don’t unravel a post-World War II world order that is based on institutions and rule of law and common interests. That is very dangerous. It is the biggest threat to the future of mankind.” Hagel added that the U.S.'s retreat would be a “catastrophe” for the world.
Analysts elsewhere are less apocalyptic, but still gloomy about Trump’s impact. “Trump’s approach is eroding the United States’s soft power and global legitimacy while also empowering its rivals, including China, by weakening the very structures that once sustained U.S. primacy,” observed Brazilian political scientist Hussein Kalout.
Earlier this year, in what was one of his last published pieces before his death, Joseph Nye, the American scholar who came up with the idea of “soft power” in the first place, warned of the consequences of Trump’s wrecking ball approach. “If Trump thinks he can compete with China while weakening trust among American allies, asserting imperial aspirations, destroying USAID, silencing Voice of America, challenging laws at home, and withdrawing from UN agencies, he is likely to fail,” Nye wrote. “Restoring what he has destroyed will not be impossible, but it will be costly.”